Ontology, Policy and the Market: Trends to Home-ownership in Hong Kong

Abstract

An important trend in housing delivery internationally has been rising rates of home-ownership. In Hong Kong, owner-occupation has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, and this is expected to continue. This paper seeks to account for trends to home-ownership in Hong Kong. It is proposed that two principal factors account for rates of home-ownership internationally: the interaction and combined outcome of housing affordability and household preferences—the 'market explanation' for tenure choice; and the 'ontological explanation' of home-ownership as a preferred household tenure choice, which assumes that ownership is the innately preferred tenure form. On face value, Hong Kong presents a relatively persuasive case for the ontological explanation for trends to home-ownership. Yet the findings of this paper suggest that the decision to buy appears to be systematically explicable by market factors: in the private sector, primarily by investment considerations, namely high returns to residential property investment and favourable user cost of housing capital; and, in the public sector, by a very fine-grained approach to household affordability with publicly assisted home-ownership initiatives. Hong Kong demonstrates again how carefully families weigh the bundle of services associated with their tenure options. The government plans to expand home-ownership further, yet there are major systemic implications for such an expansion.